Thursday, December 10, 2015

Private Armies Said Reemerging in Russia

Paul
Goble

Staunton, December 10 – It sometimes
seems that in today’s Russia, there is a race between the restoration of some
of the worst features of Soviet times and some of the worst features of the
1990s.One of the latter – the formation
of private armies businesses, governments, or parties might use – is now making
a comeback, at least in Yekaterinburg.

In an article on the URA.ru portal,
Viktor Dorofeyev says that as a result, “when they will be needed, hundreds of ‘strong
fists’ will come out into the streets of the capital of the Urals. How [such
forces] will be used is something that their masters,” not the government, “will
decide” (ura.ru/articles/1036266526).

In the 1990s, he writes, everyone in
Yekaterinburg knew about the Tsentr, Uralmash and Siniye militant groups but
most had thought these private armies were safely in the past. But “they are
returning,” the journalist says, being recruited and trained in “militant clubs”
whose members are ready to use “crude physical force.”

And as the experience of the 1990s
showed, Dorofeyev continues, such forces can quickly earn money for their
masters by destroying competitors or intimidating sellers or “be transformed
into a political” force that will allow this arm of private power to determine
what the state can and cannot do.

Getting information about these
groups is not easy: the authorities don’t want to admit they are a problem, and
those who are part of them don’t like to talk about their semi-legal or even completely
illegal arrangements – and the possibility that they will use them against the
government.

But there are “three sources” of
information about these groups, and Dorofeyev has drawn on all of them:
officials in the force structures themselves, former employees of law
enforcement organizations, and persons in the business community “who often
cooperate with semi-criminal elements.”

The largest of these groups in
Yekaterinburg is under the control of businessman German Gardt. Himself a
former participant in the private armies of the 1990s, Gardt has organized
camps and training centers so that he has at hand as many as 400 militants he
can call on to fight his competitors or prevent them or the state from
challenging his position.

But there are a variety of other
groups of various sizes under the control of various businesses in the city.
Most of those in control know each other and have worked out a modus vivendi
both among themselves and with the state, although this can and does break down
when one decides to challenge the other, Dorofeyev says.

According to the journalist, there
are approximately 1200 “well-prepared” people ready to do their masters’
bidding with their fists or weapons. What that bidding may be as the economic
crisis deepens is the big question because as the economic pie becomes smaller,
the owner of each will use what he has at hand to take a portion from another
business or the state.